Products for cleaning and treating surfaces are used to clean soil from the surface and to leave the surface with an appealing finish. However, when the water dries from the surface after using these products, watermarks, smears, and spots are left behind. When the water evaporates, it leaves behind mineral deposits. Some cleaning solutions contain chemicals that allow the water to forms beads on the surface of the object, thus creating more spots and watermarks. This has meant that manual devices such as towels or chamois had to be used to remove these water deposits.
In addition to cleaning such surfaces, it is desirable to leave these surfaces with a clean finish that lasts for a reasonable period of time. Even though such surfaces are left with a spot-free finish, when the surfaces are contacted with water, such as rainwater, in the case of surfaces exposed to outside elements, or tap water for interior surfaces, these surfaces quickly lose their spot-free finish due to the same factors that cause spotting, such as dirt, deposits of minerals which were present as dissolved solids in the water, and the like, when the surfaces are originally cleaned.
Though there are a number of waxes and other products in the market for attempting to retain this spot-free finish, these products are designed to hydrophobically modify these surfaces so that rainwater and tap water will bead up on such surfaces. However, it is believed that the beading of water on such surfaces may actually increase the formation of water spots since the beads of water will leave deposits on the surface when they dry. Thus, there is a need to provide a process of cleaning a surface without the appearance of watermarks, even after the treated surface is later contacted with water.
Moreover, there is a need to increase the speed of washing an object such as a vehicle. Standard car wash products as used at home are liquids added to a pail of water that are then applied to a vehicle with a sponge, cloth, or mitt and rinsed with a garden hose. These products require towel drying to avoid water spots on the surfaces of the vehicle. Therefore, a need exists to reduce the complexity of the process to clean or treat the surfaces of objects such as vehicles.